In Shapiro and Pincus (2008), we proposed a method for arriving at just compensation of private owners of urban land, in cases like Kelo v New London, in which government has plans to use eminent domain to `take' private properties, to be assembled into a single parcel for some public purpose....

We model a federation where States levy a tax on the wage income of mobile citizens who shop between States for their preferred tax and public policy package. It is shown that competition between States results in efficient State spending but that the taxes on wage income are inefficient in the...

Papers that examine fiscal competition for mobile factors of production commonly employ simultaneous move games between two states and focus on the inefficiency of the equilibria. Most often, the existence of the equilibrium is left unexplored. By examining decision making by governments that...

In the centrally financed public education system of Australia, interstate differences in per student educational spending have been interpreted as measures of efficiency. An alternative explanation is that the variation reflects differences in citizen preference. An analysis of a survey of...

We characterise a model in which states engage in tax and policy competition with one another to attract mobile capital. The mix of policies chosen is shown to depend on the interaction between a desire to exploit capital for the benefit of domestic residents (labour) and a net marginal...

Section 90 of the Australian Constitution gave the power to impose excise duties exclusively to the commonwealth. Sometimes it is argued that the founders were motivated by a concern to ensure free interstate trade. The authors show that Section 90 may have reduced interstate trade distortions...